


swiftly, slowly

by Echo (Lyrecho)



Series: a fool's journey [2]
Category: Persona Series, Tales of Symphonia
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, But It's All Tales Of Symphonia Characters, F/M, Lorebuilding, Persona Verse AU, Prequel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-09
Updated: 2019-10-30
Packaged: 2020-08-13 11:30:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20173540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lyrecho/pseuds/Echo
Summary: This is how they fall in love.Swiftly, slowly - and all at once.|Tumblr||Twitter|





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> okay so this is technically a precursor. or a. midcursor? to a bigger verse but, kranna...
> 
> this was just the first piece of the verse i ended up finishing and i live solely for the dopamine rush posting a fic gives me asfkjlfg anyway!! the real big Lore Things will be explained in depth in. the other pieces,, but basically this isn't canon symphonia At All, this is like if i took the symphonia cast and basic plot points and then smashed it into a salad made up of all the bits of persona 2&3 (and maybe a tiny bit 5) that i really really liked with a dash of me Breaking The Lore and Making Shit Up, and then frankenstein monstered This into existence.
> 
> it's really not that convoluted i am just! Bad At Explaining Things.
> 
> you shouldn't. need to know anything about persona, really. the characters also know nothing and what needs to be explained will be; right now there aren't any persona side characters or plots, i'm just borrowing premises and a cool setting.
> 
> anyway!! kranna. enjoy (there was meant to be smut in this but i chickened out from going explicit because lo, verily, i art a coward).

"We need to talk."

Anna's well aware of what she sounds like when she says the words - cliché, threatening, needy, insecure; a whole host of things she isn't actually feeling, and she can't help but wince, mentally rewriting what she'd wanted to say next as her brain stalls.

Thankfully, Kratos is as obtuse as he's been since the day she met him, and seems more concerned about how tense she is rather than the Words of Doom she'd just spoken.

"We can talk," Kratos says, as if to reassure her. He'd been 'relaxing' on her couch while he waited for her to come out of her bathroom, but he immediately focuses completely on her, sitting at attention. "I have time, tonight."

She knows he does. That's the whole reason she has to bring this up, _now_, before dancing around it any longer drives her crazy.

"Kratos," she begins. Pauses, and restructures her script for what must be the seventh time. "Kratos."

"Me," Kratos says, a faint smile twitching at the corners of his lips. Anna can't help but drown, for a second, in the warmth that suffuses her. It's hard to remember Kratos as the detached man he was when she first met him, as hard as it is to forget that same fact.

It's in moments like this that she can see the parts of him that were once human, still spark human, and feels hope she can kindle those sparks into a flame.

But that isn't what she's trying to talk to him about today.

"Kratos," she says, and with great determination forces her way past the uncertainty that crawls into her mind like a feral cat. "What...are we?"

She hopes to god she isn't blushing. She doesn't know what she'll do if she's blushing.

This is new ground, for her, and probably for Kratos, too. She's an escaped lab specimen; he's a man that's lived so long it's hard to fathom - both the span of the years and just how little of life he's actually experienced in all that time.

Anna has never had a relationship before - never one that lasted long enough to warrant sitting down and Defining Said Relationship. She doubts Kratos has had a relationship of the sort she's hoping for with him, ever.

It's been almost a year, now, that she's known him, and in that time, everything about their relationship has _changed_, even as it's stayed the same.

She loves him. She knows this, like she knows her name is Anna Irving, like she knows the rock embedded in her hand will surely kill her someday sooner than she'd like, like she knows she'll die before she ever lets herself be kept in a Desian lab again. She loves him, in the way only someone who has never known love before can.

She just. She isn't sure he _loves her back_.

It's a whiny thing, the voice of insecurity curled up in her head. It whispers insidious things in the back of her mind every time Kratos leaves, calls her a coward each time he stays.

Almost a year, and he barely touches her. He'll reciprocate, but he doesn't initiate, and it's driving her mad, because _what does that mean, Kratos?_

Does he want her? Is he humouring her? Does he kiss her back because it's something he genuinely desires, or because he isn't sure of how else to react, like how she'll automatically tell the guy selling her popcorn to enjoy his movie, too?

She's sick of trying to be subtle and she's sick of feeling this choking, needy dread. She's putting her foot down. Both of her feet down. They're Defining The Relationship.

"What...are we?" Kratos looks adorably confused as he blinks up at her, still standing over him. That damnably blue suit of his is laying across his lap, one of the few formalities he'll throw away when he's with her. The vest he wears under it is sleeveless, and looking at his arms, it's legitimately a wonder it's taken her _this _long to snap. "I am not quite sure I know what you mean?"

"I mean -" Anna weaves her hands through the air, cutting motions like she's trying to slice through her frustration, yanking like she can pull answers from the void. "Are we dating? Are we friends? What _are we?_"

"I didn't know - I didn't know this was troubling you," Kratos says, faltering, looking troubled.

Anna lets her shoulders slump, and slides down so she's curled up on the floor by the couch he sits on, hugging his legs. "Of course it is," she says quietly. "Kratos, you know you're the person I've known for the longest time, in my whole life, right?" She can feel him fidget under her touch. They both try to avoid talking about their pasts, about what brought them together in the first place - the crystal stuck in her hand he calls a Plume of Dusk, the Angelus Project - because saying it out loud would mean. Choices. Decisions. Ones they're just not ready to make yet.

"I've never had someone stay in my life as long as you have," she says. "Is it so bad that I want you to stay forever?"

"I -" Kratos begins. "Not to me."

She could ask, _then to who?_

But she knows he wouldn't answer her. He wouldn't answer her, not yet, and then he'd leave, and convince himself not to come back, because he's an idiot.

"I just want you to tell me what I am to you," Anna pleads, and stares up into inhuman gold eyes. "You already know what you are to me."

A moment of silence. "And what is that, Anna?"

He sounds defeated. He sounds hopeful.

"Everything," Anna whispers. "You're my everything."

Kratos huffs out what might be a disbelieving, slightly hysterical laugh, like the concept of someone caring for him so much, _loving him_ so much, is insane.

"You're stupid," he says, wonderingly.

"But you're not leaving," she points out.

"Not yet, no."

"Are you going to?"

He hesitates. "I wasn't planning to."

"And why is that?"

She's pressing on him hard, she knows. But she also knows that if this was going to scare him away, he'd already be gone. He _wants_ her to keep pushing him.

It's something of a thrill, really.

"Because I don't want to leave you," Kratos says, and reaches down, to tilt her head back. She lets him. "I don't know if I could call you my everything," he says, like he's confessing a grave sin, and his eyes beg forgiveness. She shakes her head, negates his apologies. Just because she came from nowhere, just because her life is empty - doesn't mean she wants his to be. Kratos is her everything because he's the first person she's ever got to keep, the first she can point to, and say _mine_.

She wants to be his number one, but she won't begrudge him his other connections. She's not _petty_.

"I don't need to be your everything, Kratos," she says slowly. "I just need to know that I'm _yours_. That I'm not...deluding myself, here."

"Anna..."

She pulls back from him a bit, and glances down. She hates being vulnerable, which is probably why it's taken her a year to get her act together - she had to be on the verge of imploding internally before she even dared to get out a stick to prod her emotions with.

Of course, this isn't really 'prodding' anything. It's more like she broke a piñata open all at once, because she's always been a _just rip the bandaid off_ kind of girl.

"You're not." Kratos' voice, soft and melancholy, and it jars Anna out of her thoughts. "Deluding yourself," Kratos clarifies, when she looks back up at him. "You're not."

"Then show me that," she says. "Show me it isn't just me."

She's goading him, she's daring him, she's begging him.

She wants Kratos, but not in the passive way he's been offering himself to her before now. She wants a partner, not a minion. She wants his passion, not his submission.

She wants to be his equal, to stand by his side - the two of them, together. Kratos _and _Anna.

If he wants to stay with her, if he wants this just as much as she does - then she isn't going to let him be just reactionary, anymore. _He_ has to make the first move.

And so he does.

"That's the first time you've ever kissed me, you know," Anna murmurs a minute later, lips still pressed against his, a smile tight around restrained laughter. She feels giddy, effervescent. She looks at Kratos and his eyes are so, so soft.

This might be, she thinks, the first time she's seen him truly happy.

"The first time, you say?" Kratos asks, and Anna nods. He leans in once more, and that softness in his eyes fades for a glint of mischief - mischief, and something else, something that has Anna's heart beating so fast in her chest it's a wonder it doesn't fly right out. "I suppose I have a lot to catch up on, then, if we're keeping score."

"Well," Anna says. "I suppose you do."

-x-

The first time Kratos kisses her is, thankfully, not the last. It's almost cute, to see him dance around his own uncertainty - it makes Anna wonder just how much of his reticence before she'd sat down and _forced_ them to talk was nerves and anxiety about being generally clueless what to do with feelings, rather than him rejecting her advances -

Because once she gave him the greenlight? It's like every wall between them fell away.

Oh, it's still awkward, at times. It's awkward a lot, actually, because Anna's only experience is a few fleeting flings, experimenting with freedom after breaking free from the Desian lab she'd spent most of her life in, and the sum of Kratos' experience, for all the years he has on her, is even less than that.

She's tried, a few times, through teasing, and through genuine attempts to strike up conversation, to figure out if he's ever even so much as _dated_ before her, but he remains stubbornly silent on the matter. She'd almost say he was _embarrassed_.

There's also the fact that he can't always be with her - some mornings, the best mornings, she'll wake up tangled in his arms, and even though she knows he hasn't slept, there's something comforting in knowing he held her throughout the night, knowing she was lulled to sleep by his beating heart.

And then there are the other mornings - the more frequent mornings, where she wakes up in bed alone, the other side of the mattress already long since gone cold, and knows that there's no point in getting up to search for Kratos in the apartment, because he won't be watching television, and he won't be swearing over her shitty coffee machine.

He'll just be gone, and it's on those mornings that Anna finds herself in her worst moods.

She loves Kratos, but she _knows_ he has something to do with the Desian Corp. Something to do with the people that _raised her in a cage_, that experimented on her, that _hurt her_. After all, the only reason they'd ever met in the first place was because he'd accosted her on the street to snarl low, furious questions at her about where and how she'd gotten the crystal on her hand.

For over a year now, they'd avoided the topic - Kratos wouldn't drag her back to any sort of lab, she wouldn't ask him anything specifics regarding whatever his job was, whatever _he_ was...they'd just be, and be together, and be happy.

On mornings like those, on mornings like _this_, Anna doesn't see the appeal in being happy, not as much as she usually does. She's angry, and she likes it. She stumbles out of bed angry, and makes coffee on autopilot, still angry, and sits down in front of a television playing a news report she pays no mind to, angrily going over scenario after scenario in her mind of finally confronting Kratos whenever he deigns to come back to her.

To come _home_.

Feeling a sudden, helpless urge to cry, Anna swallows down the painful lump in her throat, and chokes down a mouthful of too bitter coffee. She'd been too angry to bother with milk or creamer, and the sugar alone isn't enough to kill the blergh of the fancy poison Kratos likes to buy for himself.

There’s a part of her that’s tempted to go pour her mug out down the sink and hope that her bitterness, too, washes away with the dregs, but disgusting or not, Anna has learned the value of waste well in her life. She isn’t just going to throw anything out on a whim.

If Kratos were here still he’d tell her she was being silly. Well, not in so many words, because while their traumas didn’t match, he knew the weight of invalidation that clawed at one’s mind - he wouldn’t be dismissive of her issues. He'd - he would take the coffee for himself, and try for a smile that faltered into a grimace at however it is she’s managed to mess the brew up this time.

And then he’d probably just try to reassure her that waste didn’t matter anyway, because it was his, because he could just buy more.

Anna scowls. That, unfortunately, was another blemish on their bliss: Kratos was - essentially - her sugar daddy.

The phrasing sounds awful, even in her mind, but it's the truth, and it burns. Somewhere deep in her gut, like acid, it burns.

It's been nice, for once, to be able to live comfortably - no ID had left freelance work about her only option outside of those willing to bend the rules to pay their employees a little less, so while before Kratos she'd _managed_, his support means she isn't stressing over a second loaf of bread, let alone a roof over her head; it's not like it's any stress on his finances, either, as he's assured her multiple times.

That doesn't mean it doesn't _suck_, especially when she's caught in a dead period for her own work, with no one hiring.

It makes her feel like...like a toy, a pet, something to be kept, and kept _away_.

_Safe_, Kratos would call it, begging her in word and voice and eyes to _just stay in the apartment. Don't go out. Not today._

On those days, she'd come to learn, Desian activity in the city was frequent, and close. Kratos had only admitted it under duress - the first breaking point they'd ever come to; she'd said she'd leave him if he wouldn't throw her a kernel of truth, and she'd meant it. She still did - it's just that these days, leaving would mean so much more, be so much harder, because emotion is tied up in it now. Love, not just wary, fledgling trust.

So. So, she stays inside, on those days when he asks her to, eyes hollow, and bites back the questions, the _pleas_, that claw her apart inside.

It won't last for much longer, she knows this now. Knows herself, knows him. Soon, she knows, she will hit her peak of patience, and Kratos will either give her answers, or he will lose her forever.

That isn't a threat, even in her own mind. It isn't even an ultimatum.

It's a promise. Anna might love Kratos, but she has her limits, and she has her pride. She'll be his partner, his lover, his confidant...but he'll need to return the favour, because she _won't_ be his doll.

She's not angry, any longer. She looks down at her mug, and it's empty. She has no idea when that happened.

She's not angry. She's tired.

The stupid rock on the back of her hand throbs in what she'd almost call sympathy, if it wasn't for the fact that she knew the monster inside it had no concept of any such thing. Since escaping the facility she'd been kept in, Angelus has been silent - calm, thank god - and she was hoping it would have _stayed_ that way; she tenses, but that moment of activation is the only sign she gets that the rock is anything more than Just A Rock.

No monster trying to take her over, no voice spewing venom and _hate_ into her mind. Anna lets herself relax, but she can't unfeel the cold that just took her over. The terror that soaked her in sweat, has her heart running hard, her breath coming shallow.

_Go _away, she thinks, as vicious as Angelus has ever been when tearing at her mind, and stands up with purpose -

\- she doesn't care if Kratos' coffee is poison, right now. She needs something warm, something that will keep her from sleeping.

She's too scared of what she'll find in her dreams to face them.

Kratos comes home late - hours later, when she's been curled up on the couch for pretty much the entire day, staring into space, television long forgotten.

"Anna?" He says cautiously, and she rolls to see him hovering in the doorway to the living room. He won't step in until she's told him he can; part of her wants to think it's him being annoyingly delicate around her, because she wants her anger _back_, but she knows this is just how Kratos _is_: disgustingly polite. "Are you well?"

She waves the hand with the rock on it as her answer, and feels a sort of sadistic satisfaction when she sees how he winces - how he looks away, unable to meet her eyes.

"Is she speaking to you?" He asks, voice hollow, and he _always_ does that; calls Angelus 'her,' not _it_. It's never seemed like anything but a monster to Anna, and she's the one living with it _in her head_.

"If I said yes, what would you do?" Anna asks, bitter, accusing. "Would you finally tell me what the fuck this rock is? Would you let me rip it out of my hand?"

Golden eyes flash in a pale face, and Kratos takes a step forward in alarm, before catching himself. She waves him in, and he's by her side immediately, taking her hand in his and peering down at it intently.

"Relax," she snorts. "I didn't touch it."

He doesn't take her at face value, which is as annoying as it is endearing. "You can't take the plume out, Anna," he reminds her, for about the millionth time. "We don't have the right equipment for that here, there would -"

"There would be side effects, yes, I know," Anna echoes, and rolls her eyes. "You still haven't told me what those side effects _are_, though."

Kratos' face is set, unreadable. His eyes beg her understanding.

But...no. Not now, not today.

She's still not angry. She's still just _exhausted_. But that lump in her throat is back, and after the day she's had - the reminder that her life just isn't normal, _isn't her own_, she needs answers. She needs them, and she needs them now, and if Kratos won't give them to her, she'll claw her way out of her funk and out of the apartment and find herself someone who _will_.

"Kratos," she says. "Kratos, _please_."

He closes his eyes. He's almost easier to look at without that soft golden glow - you could almost think he was nothing more than human.

He opens his eyes.

"Okay," he says. "Okay."

Anna waits. She's good at doing that, even with impatience and anxiety stoking the urge to fidget inside her - she's good at waiting, after all, because Kratos is terrible at getting to the point.

"Hey," she says, and leans forward, to wrap her hands around his, clenched tight. Her grip is sweaty, probably, which is gross, but he doesn't pull away. "No need to get worked up, right?" A weak smile. "It's just me."

Kratos' eyes flicker all over every inch of her and away again, and Anna gives him the moment he clearly needs. "I don't want you to hate me," he says, finally, quietly, and she can hear the second, truer thoughts behind those words; _please hate me, please call me a monster, validate my self-loathing._

"I could never hate you," Anna says easily, and it's true. She thinks she's a good person at heart, and she _knows_ there are lines _she _would absolutely never cross - but she's also selfish, she thinks, because things she thinks she wouldn't forgive herself for, she'd try to absolve Kratos of. She loves him too much to let him go, after all. "At least, not in whatever way you're worrying over." _Hoping for_.

He laughs, a fragile, bitter thing. "You forgive too easily," he says, and brushes fingers along her wrists - where he'd gripped her tight enough to bruise, the first time they'd ever met.

"I've known for a long time who you work for, Kratos," Anna says. "I forgive nothing. But I _forget_ nothing, either. You weren't there. You were never there. _You_ never hurt me."

"But I allowed it to happen."

"And I'm allowing you the benefit of the doubt." She pulls her hands out of his, reaches up to cup his face. "I'm being selfish, maybe," she admits. "But I _love you_. Allow _me _that, Kratos."

"There's very little in this world I would not allow you, Anna," he says. And then, with a sigh: "The truth is the least of it. The least of what you deserve, in the end."

He pulls himself from her grasp completely, stands and nudges her - she shuffles to make room for him on the couch, and once he's settled, all but throws herself into his lap. He stiffens, for a second, tension startled to life, before he relaxes under her warmth and weight, and wraps his arms around her to bring her close.

"It starts with a girl," he tells her, voice distant. Anna, ear pressed to his chest, can hear that hummingbird heartbeat kick up another notch in tempo. "With a girl, in another time."

"How like a fairytale," Anna says dryly, but Kratos isn't laughing.

"She was called Martel," he continues, and his voice breaks around the name. "And the day she died was the day the world ended."


	2. middle

The story he tells her is almost unfathomable - if not for what she's already lived through, for the rock beating a second dissonant heart in her hand, she would absolutely not believe him. A world, an entire timeline, dead and doomed and dying, reborn anew because of the efforts of the man she's curled up against? A coup against entities her mind can only label as gods even as it rebels against the notion of any sort of higher power, all in order to bring back the life of one girl lost amidst the ruins of a dead timeline?

_Martel_, Kratos called her, love and pain and grief millennia old blending into something too weighty for Anna to comprehend. Someone he loved enough to sacrifice his humanity over. Someone he loved enough to _destroy a world _for.

A girl long loved and long dead, and Anna can't help but wonder what she'd think about what Kratos was telling her if she was here now. Kratos doesn't hold back _anything_ \- she'd finally stopped dancing around the topic, finally asked him for the truth, and he'd given her every ugly aspect of it. She's aware, well and truly _aware_, now, of just how thick the blood coating his hands is.

No wonder he hates himself. If Anna were someone else - anyone else, a little less broken, a little less selfish - she'd probably hate him too.

As it is? The rock on her hand feels heavier than it did that morning, and her heart feels like it's broken maybe a hundred times over the course of the conversation - but _for_ Kratos. Not because of him.

Love is one hell of a drug. Common sense tells her this man is a mass murderer, who at one point signed off on the caging, the experimentation, of her, of people just like her, for the insane dream of bringing a dead girl back to life.

Common sense can get _fucked_.

_This is Kratos_, her heart whispers. His skin is warm against hers, and he trembles as he awaits her judgement, like she is the Almighty, like she holds some great power, like _she_ isn't just Anna Irving, isn't just An Ordinary Human Girl.

This is Kratos, and she loves him.

"I don't forgive," she repeats. "And I don't forget. But I love you, Kratos. And for now, that's enough."

A deep, shaky inhale, a tight grip about her waist, and Anna feels the warmth of tears fall onto the top of her head.

Yes. For now, it's enough. It has to be.

-x-

Just like their first heart to heart, getting the truth out of Kratos changes things between them.

Not for the worst, thank god - Kratos is cautious around her for weeks, but as her behaviour towards him doesn't change, he relaxes, and she's met with a more open Kratos Aurion than she's ever known. Some things are still off limits, some things are still too painful, too much for him to talk about...but it's personal things. Memories that he fears speaking about, whether because he fears the hurt he'll relive or fears that they'll vanish forever if he recites them out loud; Anna doesn't know. She just knows what she can't ask about if she doesn't want Kratos freezing up: anything about what brought him to _this _time, this _point _in time. What he's been doing over the thousands of years he's lived. All forbidden topics.

What she _can_ ask about is what she cares about, anyway. His childhood - the life he lived in the old timeline, before it became the dead timeline. His friends - Yuan, Mithos, Martel. His most important people, now and then, as they were before the path they'd chosen to walk had torn away all they were from them.

When he speaks of Martel, it's in a voice thick with pain - regrets piled up, one after another - but there's also none of the weight to his words that Mithos makes him carry, that he falter around when he speaks of Yuan, even if strictly stories from 'the old days.' Anna supposes it makes sense; even if Martel is the whole reason Kratos is still here in the first place, at this point in time, she's been dead for far longer than she'd ever lived. Kratos knew her for the space of a year lifetimes ago, and even if the love he'd come to feel for her in that year was enough to kill a world over, kill _himself_ over, there was no denying the fact that, outside of her death, Martel had never caused Kratos the kind of pain Mithos and Yuan had come to, over the years.

It was enough to make Anna hate them, even though she'd never so much as met them, and hoped, as Kratos hoped, that she never would. 

It was enough to make Anna pity them, when she just didn't have the room in her heart for many people, anymore.

Eventually, Kratos' stories of Martel run out, and he quietly tells her of Yuan - his first real friend, who'd hated him at first, the person who had revealed to him the truth of the world and so much more.

"Wait," Anna says, shifting in her seat on the bench, and Kratos, doing the dishes, pauses in his scrubbing to raise a brow at her. "You just said Yuan was half-_elf_."

Kratos blinks. "Yes?"

"Elves aren't real??" Anna says. "Duh?"

"Of course they're real," Kratos dismisses. "Or well, they were real. They could all be dead now. They left this realm behind eons ago."

"Are you trying to pull the wool over my eyes?" She squints at him. "Hate to burst your bubble, _honey_, but I'm not that easy to fool."

Kratos rolls his eyes. "The fact that I'm thousands of years old, easy to accept," he says dryly. "But elves - _that's_ where you draw the line?"

"I've met you, and I know when you're lying," Anna says. "I've never met an elf in my life."

"Maybe not, but you've met plenty of half-elves."

She narrows her eyes at him. "And what is that supposed to mean?"

He shifts, as if uncomfortable, and Anna can see the shame flicker to life in his eyes. "The only humans in Desian labs are the ones in cages," he says, low and guilty.

Well. Okay then. That's -

She's not going to think about it. She's spent years knowing Kratos was one of the people that kept her in a cage, if not directly - spent years knowing that even though _she_ got out, those cages, and the other people in them, are still there. Still with the Desians, just like Kratos is, even if he hates it. Knowing that her captors weren't human doesn't change - well, anything, really. It might seem more horrifying in her head, sure, but that's just her brain being stupid. It doesn't change anything.

So she's not going to think about it.

"Right," she says faintly. "Okay. Elves are real." She shakes her head. "How the hell -"

Kratos shrugs. "Even back in the original timeline, they lived hidden," he says. "The entire supernatural world had, for centuries. It's just the same here. I only ever found out because of Yuan."

That's something that interests Anna, because she always wants to know more about Kratos' past, and Yuan is a gateway to that, but when he says it he looks uncomfortable, so Anna just tucks the info away for later - clearly, this isn't something Kratos is in the mood for talking about, not with cages still on his mind.

"So," she says, and claps her hands. Kratos jumps, but recovers quickly, and stares at her attentively as he moves to put his hands back in the sink. "Any other non human beings I should be worried about running into? Since _elves_ of all things are apparently on that list."

"Half-elves," Kratos corrects, and Anna can hear the smirk in his voice. "And I suppose if it matters so much to you, I had better tell you the landlord of this place is a dwarf, no?"

Anna nearly falls off of the counter. "Shut the fuck up," she says. "Now I _know_ you're bullshitting me."

-x-

He introduces her to his landlord - Dirk - with very little fanfare, and he's a nice guy, if a little rough around the edges. It's not like Anna has any room to complain about that, really; she's no refined lady herself.

_I stay here because Dirk isn't one to ask questions,_ Kratos tells her, _and unlike a lot of the hidden world, he has no connection to Cruxis. Most dwarves - the ones that are left - don't. They're a very reclusive people._ A hand gripping her shoulder tight, a far more delicate touch tilting her chin back. _If you need to_, he says slowly, _If I'm not here - you can trust him. Trust Dirk._

Anna doesn't trust anybody except Kratos. Not even herself, really. Still - in that moment he had seemed so tense, so worried, biting at his peeling lips, his fingers drumming an anxious rhythm across her skin, that she hadn't been able to bring herself to say that to him.

_I will_, she says instead. _I promise._

-x-

Summer comes, and with it, warmer evenings. Anna sleeps with the windows open and relishes the nighttime air on her skin, the quieted city sounds. On the nights Kratos stays with her, he shoots the open windows suspicious looks and Anna wounded ones every time she rebuffs his pleas to keep them shut tight while she sleeps.

"Kratos," she says, patient, but not really. "I am an adult, and if I want to sleep with my windows open, I _will."_

"Well, I - I am an older adult than you, so..."

He trails off, face redder than his hair, and sounds so flustered that Anna bites back her instinctive response of scathing insults, and raises a brow. "I will throw a shoe at you," she says. "And not one of mine. I'll go down to the basement and ask Dirk for one of his - he has steel-toed ones lying around somewhere, I'm sure of it. I will throw a pair at you and it will _hurt__."_

"Anna."

"Don't 'Anna' me, _Aurion."_

_"Anna."_

A moment's silence, and then -

Anna bursts out laughing. Kratos pouts, but she can see the laughter dancing in his eyes too. The tension in the room dissipates a little; this argument isn't over, she can tell, but Kratos is, thankfully, not in much of a mood to be escalating it.

"If you're so worried about me being abducted in the night," she says lightly, unwilling to let the subject to drop just yet, without getting her final word in, "then you'll just have to make sure you're home to guard me more often, won't you?"

Kratos' pout deepens, but he doesn't tell her she's wrong.

"I'm trying, Anna," he says quietly. "I am. You know I am."

She does.

"Try harder," she says anyway.

-x-

Credit where it's due; Kratos really takes her words to heart - throughout the summer months, Anna spends more nights curled up in his arms than not, and while there's a part of her that wishes this had been a trend back in winter, when she'd have _really_ appreciated some extra body heat in the bed, she's just glad he's there with her at all.

She thinks Kratos feels the same way, but she's not really sure, until one night, laying on her stomach, night air cool on her bare skin, just drifting off into a comfortable doze.

"You really do love me, don't you?" Kratos asks, leaning up onto his elbows and rolling on his side, and Anna blinks before looking up at him.

He's almost unfathomably old, Anna knows this. Still... in that moment, there's something tremulous, something wavering and innocent and scared in how Kratos emphasises the _me_ in that question.

"Of course I do," Anna says, reaching up to tangle a hand in hair hanging loose over a bare shoulder, slightly damp with sweat. Like this, his lips swollen from kisses, marks on his throat already bruising, red scrapes of fingernails and teeth, his golden eyes soft with the afterglow... Kratos doesn't quite look as he always does, just a man hardened by time. Wrapped in sheets and tangled between Anna's legs, he looks like a lost boy. "_You're_ mine."

He takes in a deep, shuddering breath, and with her free hand Anna takes a hold of one of his, running her thumb gently across the backs of his fingers. "Hey," she says, soft and low. "What's set this off, hmm?"

He leans down, and buries his face into her neck. He stays there, like he's breathing her in. He doesn't speak.

Okay. Okay. Anna is Officially Worried Now.

"Kratos?"

"I'm here," he says, a promise. "I'm here. I just -" he chokes up. "I don't deserve you," he whispers. "Or, it's more... you don't deserve me, you deserve someone far, far better than I -"

Her grip on him tightens. "What does deserving have to do with anything?" She says. "I don't see a far better person in my bed, in my arms. I see you. Because I _love_ you, Kratos."

He laughs, a broken, bitter sound. "You shouldn't," he says, and pulls back from her, his eyes filled with regret as he takes her in. "I'm a monster."

"You're not my monster," Anna says. "You could have dragged me back to a Desian lab. You could have killed me, ripped this damned stone from my skin. You didn't. You saved me. You're the only person who _ever_ saved me." She swallows, and untangles fingers from his hair to trail down, slowly, and cup his cheek. A gentle touch brushes a tear away. "Even if you think yourself a monster, Kratos - even if you _are_ one - you'll never be one to me. And I will _always_ love you."

The tears are falling harder now, silent sobs wracking his body. "You shouldn't," he repeats, and his voice cracks.

"Maybe not," Anna whispers, and leans up to press a kiss to his forehead. "But neither of us get to decide what our hearts want. And mine wants you, forever and always."

"Forever and always," Kratos echoes.

Anna hates how empty he sounds. _Hates it_.

"Here," she says, and tugs him back down, so they're skin to skin, tangled up under the sheets. "Come here, Kratos. Come to me. Let me show you how I love you."

And she does. Totally, and wholly.

-x-

Kratos' visits become less frequent after that, again, as if she'd frightened him off. The regret in his eyes that night burrows its way into Anna's brain like a venomous worm, and she wonders and worries and frets over if she'd done the right thing, said the right thing. She'd had no idea what she'd been doing, after all. She never has any idea what she's doing.

Which is why, when there's a knock on the door, she gets up to answer it automatically - never mind that Kratos has a key, that Kratos can and always does enter as he pleases, and the only other person she can fathom coming up here to visit her - Dirk - has never knocked, either - she has no idea what she's thinking. She doesn't even question herself; she should really get onto doing that more often.

Anna doesn't really think anything _bad_ is going to happen when she goes to answer the door, to be fair - what Desian force would _knock at her door politely?_ To be completely honest, the possibility never even crosses her mind - she's paranoid, sure, but paranoid _within reason_, and she's lived in this apartment for going on two years now, and nothing bad has Ever Happened.

It's possible, she muses, staring Yuan Ka-Fai in the face, that she's let herself relax a little _too_ much, living in bliss with Kratos.

"Miss Irving," the man who could absolutely kill her in a second says, and makes as if he's about to _step inside her apartment_, "you're quite a hard woman to -"

_Bang_.

She wasn't thinking, when she opened the door in the first place. She still isn't thinking when she slams the door shut. Even once she does, she only has the one thought, and it's _oh fuck_. Not very helpful.

"Miss Irving," Yuan Ka-Fai repeats, voice muffled through the door but still clearly there. Not going away, _fuck._ "I'd really rather not force my way inside, but I will if I have to. If you're not going to let me in, I'd advise you stand back from the door. Wouldn't want you getting injured now, would we?"

It's hard to tell if that's a threat. It sounds sort of threatening, but his voice is more amused than anything, and Anna's panicked hamster mind running in circles isn't exactly helping her critical thinking skills.

_"Uh,"_ she says, and frantically tries to stall for time. "Does - does Kratos know you're here?"

"I didn't tell him, if that's what you're asking," he says. "I imagine he'll know in short order regardless, and rush over here himself soon anyway, though." A pause. "Once more, Miss Irving - let me in. Final warning."

There's nowhere to hide - the apartment is way too small. Out the window? The fire escape? Could she make it to either one fast enough?

Her heart is beating a million times faster than it should be, she's pretty sure, and she already knows the outcome to this. She can't outrun him. She _can't._

She opens the door.

Yuan smiles at her. "I'll invite myself in, shall I?"

And he does.

-x-

After the anxiety she's suffered through because of him, all in the space of about ten minutes, Anna is loathe to admit Yuan Ka-Fai is right about anything more than she already has, but his supposition was spot on - he's barely been inside the apartment for five minutes when Kratos bursts in, eyes wild. Anna's just put the kettle on.

"Hello, Kratos," Yuan greets easily, like this isn't essentially some sort of - hostage situation. Kratos looks from him to Anna wearily, as if unsure of who to run to first. "How surprising to see you here! Anna's just getting some tea ready for me; I'm sure she could get you some coffee if you asked nicely."

"Anna kills coffee," Kratos says, before clenching his jaw tight. Anger flashes across his face; self recrimination. It's clear he hadn't meant to say that - probably hadn't meant to say anything, honestly.

"Well, considering her other talents, I suppose that's only fair," Yuan says. "One can't be good at _everything,_ that just wouldn't be sporting."

Anna narrows her eyes, unsure just what it is he's getting at. "My other talents?"

Yuan's gaze flicks to the stone embedded in the back of her hand, and disgust wars with something she can only call _longing_ in his expression. "Survival, sweetheart," he says, and smiles. It isn't a nice smile; all teeth and threat. Kratos tenses from across the room.

"Relax, relax," Yuan says. "I'm just here for tea, right now. Tea - and talk." He raises his empty mug up in a toast at Anna, that smile still on his face. Behind her, the kettle shrills, and she takes the out with gratitude, turning away from the men and the tension building up between them.

"Talk?" Kratos growls. "How did you even _find_ this place?"

"Yggdrasil might be content to let you wander about alone so long as you attend to your duties," Yuan says, "but I'm not as blind as he is. Nor am I as obsessed." He sips at his tea like he can't feel how scalding it is, never mind that it hasn't steeped properly, yet. "Years ago, you were told to capture an Angelus Project escapee. Years ago, you told us you'd failed to find the lost experiment. Years ago, you started making frequent visits to an apartment you'd never spent more than one night a year in before. Yggdrasil pays little enough attention to the world outside the Room that your..._dalliances_ have never been noticed by him, but did you think me stupid?" Yuan shakes his head. "Really, Kratos."

Kratos flushes an angry red, across his cheeks and down his neck, and Anna cannot tell if it's anger or embarrassment painted bright on his face. "Is there a point to this," he says through his teeth, "or are you just _trying_ to piss me off?"

Anna jumps, a bit. She's never heard anything even approaching vulgar language from Kratos' lips, and she has to admit that that reaction of his makes her more nervous than anything else that's happened so far.

Kratos sees her flinch, and sends her an apologetic look. She smiles weakly at him.

Yuan looks between the two of them and shakes his head, sighing. "Did you think you could hide her for forever, Kratos?"

"It's worked so far."

"Because no one has _cared__._ Kvar -" Anna flinches at the name "- has gained Yggdrasil's ear. Filled his head with all sorts of possibilities for what it could mean, if the Angelus escapee has, in fact, survived this long." A meaningful look at the _goddamn fucking stone_ on the back of Anna's hand, and Kratos pales. "Every Grand Cardinal is on an _active_ lookout for her. I was content to let you alone, but this?" Yuan shakes his head. "I'm not letting you risk yourself over some experiment that failed to die when it should have, especially considering what it would mean for _me_ if Yggdrasil found your betrayal...unforgivable."

Kratos looks sick. "Yuan," he says. He's pleading.

He's _pleading_. Kratos, begging for her life, _in their home__._

_No__._

Anna isn't quite sure what possesses her in that moment, but it's sure as hell not common sense. She reaches for the kettle she placed on the bench beside her, and before her brain can catch up to the rest of her and make her think twice, she's stalked forward and dumped the still boiling water onto Yuan Ka-Fai's head.

He makes a strangled sort of gasping noise. Kratos does, too.

"Fuck you," Anna says. "Kratos has told me about you, you know? Not much, but enough to know he loves you. A lot." She flings the damn kettle at his head, too. "Some brother _you_ are."

Sopping wet, brows angled in annoyance, Yuan shoves his drenched hair back from his face to glare at her. He looks like a drowned cat. "Emotional manipulation, Miss Irving?"

Anna shrugs. "I'm not manipulating anything," she says, saccharine. "That's your ballpark. I'm just laying out facts."

"Facts, hmm? Well, the facts are that you _will_ be found out, and Kratos will be punished for letting your short life go on for any longer than it already has." Dark eyes meet hers. "Even if you were never found, Anna, what was your plan? Kratos? Live out your lives together until she dropped dead from old age and you added another loss onto the pile? Kratos - you know, once we get what we're looking for, this timeline and everyone in it -"

"Shut up, Yuan," Kratos says, but there's no force behind it. "Thank you for your warning. Please leave."

For a long, long moment, Yuan simply stares at the man that calls him brother. Then, inclining his head, he stands. "As you wish," he says softly, and turns to Anna. "Thank you for the tea, Miss Irving, and the company." He exits with little fanfare. Anna hears the apartment door click shut behind him

"Warning?" She asks, and Kratos sighs.

"Yuan's an asshole," he says simply, and steps forward to take her into his arms. Oh, she's shaking. She hadn't realised that. Hadn't even felt the trembles. "But he loves me. We know now, that people are looking for you. We'll have to be more careful."

"Please," Anna whispers. "Please don't make this place my prison." _Not again. Not when it's finally_ home.

"Never," Kratos promises. "Never again, Anna. I swear it to you."

She believes him. It hurts, but she does.

"I love you," she says, and means it.

"As I love you," Kratos says.

"We're worth this," she tells him. "We're worth fighting for, I know we are. We'll make it through this, I _know_ we will."

When she pulls back, he's smiling down at her softly.

"We will," he says, and kisses her.

-x-

After that, she doesn't quite expect life to be _easier_ \- of course not - but she does, at least, expect it to plateau, a bit. Life can only throw so many wrenches in the works at once, after all.

As it turns out, Anna has somehow underestimated just how cruel life can be.

She presses a hand to her stomach. It's flat, and it looks it, but she knows it won't remain that way for long.

The pregnancy test in her hand is positive. So are the three cluttered across the bathroom sink, and the two she'd already thrown into the trash.

Anna lets the test drop to the floor. A deep, shuddering breath, as she buries her face in her hands and resists the urge to break down crying.

She'd never imagined children, but she knows this isn't the life she'd want for them; hiding, always in danger. 

Well. This is what she's been given. What her child has been given; their lot in life.

"Looks like the Irving luck will run strong in you, huh, kid?" She says, slightly watery, and she takes in another breath.

Okay. Okay. This is real. This is happening - 

\- she needs to tell Kratos.

_Fuck._

"You've got this, Anna," she tells herself. "You've had worse. You've got this."

They're Irvings, after all, and they're more than strong enough to take on _anything_.

**Author's Note:**

> velvet room kratos makes me feel a Certain Kinda Way,


End file.
